Cannon scales back plan to remake Supreme Court

April 6, 2011|By Aaron Deslatte, Tallahassee Bureau Chief

TALLAHASSEE — House Speaker Dean Cannon rolled out a scaled-back plan to reform Florida's court system Wednesday, succumbing to pressure from jurists and Senate lawmakers alike to go slower in his quest to radically re-structure the judiciary.

The new plan — a proposed constitutional amendment that will get its first committee hearing today — would still split the Florida Supreme Court into separate civil and criminal divisions, but it attempts to get more buy-in from lawyers and judges by tying the reform to a dedicated funding stream for courts.

Cannon's announcement comes as Gov. Rick Scott agreed to a $19.5-million bridge loan to help close a deficit that saw the courts threatening to virtually shut down next month. Cannon's plan would provide minimum court funding equal to 2.25 percent of the state's general revenue tax collections, or about $537 million next year. The court system this year got 1.94 percent of general revenue.

Another new wrinkle to Cannon's plan would allow legal challenges to move to the Supreme Court more quickly by removing the "jurisdictional prerequisite" that there must be a conflict between two separate appeals courts on a question of law.

"To lawyers, that's a big deal," Cannon said. "This basically will give the court greater flexibility to hear and dispose of questions of great public importance."

Rather than setting up separate five-member civil and criminal courts, Cannon's modified plan would add three justices to the seven-member Supreme Court, and break it into two five-judge divisions. A single chief justice would be appointed by the governor, rather than elected by the court, as now.

Cannon has argued that this would enable the high court — which now spends much of its time hearing death-penalty appeals — to handle more civil cases. But critics have noted this would allow Republican Gov. Rick Scott to add three more justices.

He dropped a previous provision that would have required appellate judges to win at least 60 percent of the vote to be retained in office. Opponents had argued that this provision would politicize the court by forcing justices to raise campaign war chests.

And the plan backs off Cannon's push to open up Judicial Qualifications Commission investigations to the public, though it would allow House members to inspect files and records of confidential investigations. The original proposal opened records of complaints against judges to the public.

Several lawyers have testified that opening those records before "probable cause" is determined might have a "chilling effect" on the people filing the complaints.

Cannon said House members have tried to get records on judicial investigations and been rebuffed. Such access is warranted, he said, because the House initiates impeachment proceedings against judges — although he acknowledged that has never happened in modern Florida history. Since the JQC was established more than 30 years ago, it has taken results of its investigations to the state Supreme Court to seek removal of judges from the bench.

'They [the JQC] tell us they have 500 cases every year and they won't even show us the records today," Cannon said. "We can't do our job constitutionally if we can't even know what the complaints are."

But incoming House Democratic Leader Perry Thurston, a Plantation lawyer, called allowing lawmakers access "an unnecessary step that could lead to judicial impeachments occurring before all the facts are gathered and understood."

Pieces of Cannon's reform have been moving slowly through the Senate, although they are attracting criticism as legislative over-reach.

A Senate committee earlier this week passed a bill that would require Senate confirmation of Supreme Court justices, who now are named directly to the court by the governor. Both houses are also considering bills that would give lawmakers authority to approve or reject court-administration rules now promulgated by the high court. And Cannon is pushing a bill that would allow the governor to appoint all members of Judicial Nominating Committees, removing appointments by The Florida Bar.

Critics have complained that it appeared lawmakers were advancing the court changes because the Supreme Court last year blocked three legislatively drawn constitutional amendments from reaching voters.

That looks "like we're going after different groups of people because they haven't supported us appropriately," said Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater. "And we're going after the Supreme Court because they haven't ruled exactly how we thought they should on some of the amendments."